By Chad Monfreda Let’s hope renewables avoid nuclear’s sorry fate. Fifty years ago, the atom was full of promise. Electricity would be too cheap to meter and the world would be made safe, peaceful and rich. Today, Fukushima is but…

By Keith D. Hjelmstad This talk was part of a panel entitled “Nerd talk, geek speak, and the challenges of 21st century knowledge silos” held at Arizona State University on October 1, 2012, and hosted by the Center for Science…

By Clark A. Miller Big data has become all the rage. The Internet and other technologies of data collection and surveillance have produced massive amounts of information. Big business and the scientific community now want to put that information in…

By Rosalyn Berne Prologue When the Virtual Information System for Human Noetic Evolution and Welfare emerged, it was detected in very few localities on Earth. Exquisitely intelligent, it appears to have formed independent of human design. Discretely linked in time…

By Mary Jane Parmentier I am separated by one year from former Libyan Ambassador Chris Stevens. He and I were both Peace Corps English teachers in Morocco in the early 1980s, and shared, no doubt, a love of the region…

By Kimberly Elms The recent release of the iPhone5 and the anniversary of Steve Jobs’ death remind me that the legacy of Jobs remains alive and well, both at Apple and in the way Americans think about innovation. While we…

Scientists, especially highly successful ones, are often reluctant to write about themselves, to tell their own stories, of research and the pursuit of new knowledge. Modesty, of the value of appearing modest, is only one reason for the furtiveness of…

By Clark Miller People are generally far more rational than our hyper-scientific culture is willing to acknowledge. Occasionally, however, faulty assumptions are so deeply built into even scientific ways of thinking that errors get perpetuated over and over without ever…

By David Guston In the midst of the full-frontal politics that now passes for the nominating conventions of the two major political parties in the United States comes a modest opportunity for sober reflection by the candidates on some crucial…